In his latest Fast10 blog, Broken tragedian Ally Beaven talks well-nigh a return to racing, in a very Scottish highland, but frankly lovely sounding event.
Russell McKechnie, Highland Hill Runners OG and El Presidente, drags his heel through the pebbles of a quarry wangle road somewhere not too far north of the Cromarty Firth.
“Right, this is the start line. It’s moreover the finish. That’s the first hill you can see through the trees. Without that, descend to the bealach, climb Beinn Tharsuinn and get when here however you like.”
He’s addressing a sparse prod of well-nigh a dozen runners, scrutinizingly all of them wearing their Highland Hill Runners vests. Which feels a bit unneccesary, seeing as the race is for club members only.
Back on a start-line and any start-line will do
Closed doors notwithstanding, there is a sense of occasion. The start/finish is in an unrecognized lay-by on the B9176 to Bonar Bridge, the hill itself a rouded heathery lump, of interest to only the most bloody-minded of baggers. But it’s a race and I haven’t washed-up one of those in 16 months.
“It’s a sunny day so there’ll be no problems with navigation,” says Russell. “You’ve once passed the biggest test anyway. There’s four Beinn Tharsuinn’s in Scotland and you’ve come to the right one. Ok then. . .go.”
From the start there are four of us at the front. Me, Jack, Dan and Andrew, running increasingly or less side by side wideness the track with Rua, Jack’s shorthaired pointer, scooting virtually our legs. No-one’s going particularly hard. In fact, without so long without racing, it definitely feels like we’re a little unsure what the etiquette is.
Early polite sparring
The first few kilometres are chatty. We all get our excuses in. Everyone mentions the heat. Jack tells an anecdote well-nigh the time Rua’s fear of cattlegrids forfeit him the win at the winter version of this race. The Dan starts to printing on and I make the calculated visualization to let him go. (i.e. I can’t pension up.)
We’ve been instructed to take the path that passes just to the right of the quarry. The quarry which, to everyone’s surprise, is working on a Saturday.
Four variegated runners take four variegated lines, each one’s route nomination unswayable by a combination of their towage of the fastest looking terrain and their fear of stuff squandered up or worse, shouted at, by the quarry staff.
The heather deepens. We stop kidding ourselves and start to walk. I’m half focussed on the wrestle with my fellow runners, half on the wrestle between liberally unromantic factor 30 and my rapidly increasing sweat rate.
The hunter and the hunted
Andrew is chasing Dan, I’m chasing Andrew, Jack is chasing me. Rua is somewhere in between, the frequency of her appearances a useful weather vane for the gap behind. Nothing much changes, the gaps expanding and contracting as the undertow undulates but overall staying increasingly or less the same, untied from overdue where Jack has started to waif away; by the time we reach the top of Beinn Tharsuinn Rua is all but absent.
The descent when to the quarry is heathery and pathless, whispered from a faint, occasional trod that might be man-made but could equally have been created by sheep. Me and Andrew have the wholesomeness of following, smoothing out the kinks in Dan’s lines and gaining a handful of metres.
Where they pension right, I unravel off left, picturing the map and gingerly that this would save precious metres of loftiness and climbing. My track record with route nomination gambles is, putting it lightly, mixed. With my competitors out of site I sail elegantly over the peat hags; I’m a genius and I’m going to win. My leg disappears lanugo a subconscious slum and I fall on my face; I’m a moron and I’m losing minutes.
Marginal… non-gains
My zoetic is getting ragged as I slither out of a shrivel and Dan and Andrew come when into view. My gamble has made. . .bugger all difference.
Back on the track for the run to the finish, I finger well out of my element. In the hot sun, trying to run 3 minutes whatever per kilometre and pull when the two in front who are tantalisingly close. Andrew is a little increasingly well washed-up than I am, making no struggle to up the pace as I ooze raspily by, but Dan is infuriatingly constant. Twenty two seconds over 70 minutes sounds kinda close, but it wasn’t.
We stagger to a halt when in the roadside dustbowl, exchanging well dones and hand, fist and elbow bumps of varying degrees of covid safety, surpassing staggering off to write our times on the clipboard that Russell has left under his car.
Milling virtually afterwards, I realise that just as much as the physical anguish, I’ve missed the social speciality of racing. Sitting in the river, talking inconsequential bollocks with other runners and enjoying the warmth of the sun, both of which you were sacrilegious just fifteen minutes earlier.
